Both leading graphics processor developers have become very tolerant to the fact that graphics card makers raise the clock speeds of their solutions above the nominal values in order to diversify their product range. Today we are going to tell you about two graphics cards from ATI Radeon HD 3800 family from Asustek Computer and will try to find out if the manufacturer can really benefit from increasing the nominal clock speeds of 3870 and 3850 models.

Performance in RPG

Hellgate: London

The ASUS EAH3870 TOP is slightly ahead of the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB but the Nvidia card seems preferable due to its higher minimum of speed even though 21fps is not really comfortable. The ASUS EAH3850 TOP outperforms the reference card by 10% at 1280x1024 but this has no practical value as its speed is anyway too low.

Gothic 3

The current version of the game doesn’t support FSAA, so we performed the test with anisotropic filtering only.

Having fewer TMUs than the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT, both versions of Radeon HD 3870 have good results at 1280x1024 anyway. Their minimum speed guarantees the lack of any slowdowns that are sure to occur with a GeForce 8800 GT 256MB. Overclocking brings about a 3fps addition to the average frame rate, which has no effect on gameplay.

The cheaper ATI Radeon HD 3850 cannot cope with this test even at 1280x1024 and its overclocking gain is as small as with the Radeon HD 3870.